Origin

People unable to make up their minds whether to do something are likely to ask themselves ‘Shall I?’ repeatedly. With the rhyming impulse also seen in dilly-dally (early 17th century) (dally came from the French for ‘to chat’ in the Middle Ages) and willy-nilly, people in the 18th century mocked this tendency by expanding it to ‘shill I, shall I?’, and so shilly-shally was born.

Derivatives

shilly-shallyer

They opted instead for a policy of ‘splitting’ whereby the chaff of shilly-shallyers and equivocators could be shorn away to leave a core group of those absolutely committed to revolution at all costs.

It is the shilly-shalliers who have contributed most to the present deplorable state of your society.

The author has it in for politicians, liberals, student activists, pinkos and shilly-shallyers.